My Lady of Magic
by Halewyn's Lady
Summary: After the fight.


My Lady of Magic

Yet another story on Merlin's complicated relationship with his watery aunt and dark fairy mother. Traditionally there is two here being too stubborn and one hopelessly unstubborn, but that all changes... when the fire-nation (sorry, no fire nation, though fire balls were thrown), after the film's final fight between Merlin and Queen Mab resulting in her shadowy demise.

I wrote this story years ago. Finally it sees the light of a computer screen. Enjoy.

"My Lady of the Lake!" His voice boomed, out of habit.

He had taken on his usual role of authority again, although his days of authority were over. He wondered how soon he would miss the power. His purpose was gone. There was only the lack of Nimue and loss of home left for him in world.

He expected no tingle of magic. No faint whispers, no gossamer layer of light rippling over the Lake. The Lake shone, devoid of life. It was no more than a lake now.

The beauty of the water its sole magical feature. He half-expected her to have faded together with her sister, drifted away entirely from this plane of existence.

_Why claim me as yours?_ She asked herself. _I am not yours, Merlin._ _What makes you so bold? You who never even acknowledged your divine mother with such honesty._

"I am here." she calls.

"Where is Mab?" Murder lingers in his voice.

She was sitting on a stone, she was watching the sun set on her own glowing form. For a moment he watched too. Transfixed. He beheld her shift silently on her rock, he heard her sigh, almost too soft to hear.

"Quiet..." her voice, barely a voice, soft and airily threatening.

She was not so much avoiding his question as having forgotten it existed at all.

He walked towards her. He hoped to break her unwillingness to answer.

Murderer of a mother. They were two and the same. On her suggestion, he had done all. Plotted to murder her sister. What punishment would have befallen them in ancient times for this?

"It is night. Could this not wait?"

"Mortal time does not matter to you.

The fight is over, I am tired."

"I am tired too." She was being polite. She needed him gone.

"I need this to be over with."

He raked his hand through his hair, it was a gesture she recognized from when he was younger. Boyish and innocent. He was far from perfect now. Far removed from the boy who once greeted her. Merlin felt it too. He had killed. Every moment he lived from now on would be affected by this act.

Everyone in the country knew their wizard had killed the old goddess. Everyone knew, in a vague manner.

The people would know better than to speak of the event in the future. They knew that this day they had somehow helped him by turning their backs. They knew that they had to forget about it. For everyone's sake. For the world's sake.

Some would in time take pride in having been a part of it. Merlin knew the ever gnawing hushed sense of guilt that would be theirs to live with. It would not be loud enough to resurrect the evil goddess and the dangers she had posed. The woman in mists of whom they had known so little, not even a name. A silent pressure had settled upon him. The weight of his crime, his fault.

Merlin had believed the dread within would leave him as he left Camelot, yet he felt it more now, when visiting one more dying Lady of Legend before taking his rest from this trying day.

"But you, Lady, she, her,... " He was more tired than he had foreseen. "I need to know she came this way. As I told her to..."

"So, you vanquished her? Your mother? My poor sister..." She idly brushed her skirt. Her long white hair fell back, streaked with pale gray. There was a momentum to her lightness that he could not place.

"Sit with me?"

He did. He had never been this close to her.

She stroked his hair, a moment, a pale soft smile on her lips and in her eyes. Her eyes were wrong, so much was wrong, and familiar.

"I did not expect to see you again." Merlin admitted. "Are you queen of the fairies now?"

"There are no fairies left." He appeared surprised. "What did you expect, Merlin?"

"I thought they'd be free?"

"From their queen? She was their heart and life force, as much as nature is, they need magic as the air they breathe.

Yes, they are free, if you look at it in a certain way."

He tried not to let his defeat show. The sadness was written all over his face. He had permitted himself to be naive, this once, it had cost him dearly. He had tried so hard to limit the ruin.

Her fingertips wet on his skin, she drew circles in the back of his neck.

"I am all that is left." she whispered.

"Wat are you?"

"I am not your aunt.

You knew I was weak... I admit, I don't know what I am this night..." She leaned her face gently against him, as to shield herself from the truth. "She is with me."

He forced words to come. "I need to know what is left of her, what it is that is here, if it is safe, with you. "

A grown-man's confident stammer.

"Merlin," she pressed harder against him, her hand held open to him, he took it.

The scales on her dress felt hard as rock.

"I could do with some honesty, My Lady Aunt."

She smiled. "Such reverence..." _What her sister would have given ..._

"I need certainty, comfort, please tell me what happened. As much as you can remember, share with me your experience."

"You ask so kindly. Why encroach on my space, why take my hand, why trust me at all? You told her, your mother, to join... me, why are you amazed? She has."

She stroked the back of his hand. "Neither of us could hold onto our existence on our own.

Without our initiative our energies embraced. After she fled from Camelot, pulled out by you. I can't tell you more, I don't know more. I have had no time to reflect on this."

Unselfconsciously the hero squeezed her hand, feeling as fallen as she was. "Do I need to fear you too? Stop you..." His voice broke. "Cease..." His mind transported him back to his childhood years. She turned, cocked her head at him, pale green-purple eyes took him in.

"to exist me?

I don't know, Merlin, do you?"

"You were my only friend.

You alone came close to understanding my strife, the moral dilemmas I faced, the predicaments queen Mab and the mortal kings forced me in."

"How you struggled, my dear." She spoke wistfully. Mistrust gazed back at her.

"You needed no words to understand my pains. My mentor who gave me exactly what I needed, every time."

"Is it a friend the wizard wanted? Or a magical aunt to give him presents?" He caught on quickly to her implications.

"As Mab to Mordred?" he accused. "No, that was never you."

She raised an eyebrow, it had been the exact same, in her eyes.

"You were unselfish. You were the voice of reason and wisdom ... once." Only yesterday. "She of chaos and bloodshed."

"Would you trust us both to give you presents?" Her whisper scraped his heart.

He extracted himself from her glistening embrace.

"Can you risk letting me live? If this is life..." she wondered, observed the light and shadow in her glittering hands, she gave him time. He reacted abruptly. "Merlin, do not turn from me, don't walk away." He turned his back on her, in his warlike stride, ready to attack.

"Are you harmless?" he demanded.

"Harmless," she feigned the detached mentality the fluid part of her had taken to everything in life. Life had been a few worlds removed from herself. The Lady's voice, as he had always known it. "none of us have ever been harmless. Not you, not your humans,..." She was careful not to let her tone slip into disinterest.

"Can you contain her?" He interrupted her slow words as he never would have done before. His respect for her already faded.

"Merlin! I should be outraged, but your phrasing, has always been a bit rough."

"Will you submit to a test?"

"What kind of test?"

"Ethics." he snapped, rather insulted that she had not guessed.

Naturally. She sighed in a most loving manner. "Do you truly believe, can you, for a moment, believe your aunt would have a feeling for your precious human ethics?"

"Don't you dare..."

"Speak ill of myself?" she smiled benignly upon him. "While your Lady was admiring of your human side, she did not share your feelings. She was not human. Not one drop of her." she added artfully. "Liking humans is not the same as caring for them, the only mortal she cared for was you.

No, I have not inherited my sister's affinity for mortals. Your aunt knew not how mortals feel. She felt and acted as her sister did in many ways, like a god. So do you, though you deny it. Your Lady tried to take her best guess at these decent mortal morals she so appreciated, but" she said infinitely patient, soft and mocking, her voice inflecting as Mab's. "you must stop being an idiot.

You hardly act on your ethics yourself."

"At least I try."

"It is in your blood, to be cruel."

"No."

"No, you will never be mortal and you will always hate yourself for it.

What did I expect from having you raised by a human? A crabby old disillusioned priestess and a malcontent gnome were your first windows to the world."

"You blame my education?"

"I do, you were never supposed to be this much like the people you were born to lead. You are too human." He wanted to shout "Mab!" at her and "liar" and could not, because her voice was not exactly his mother's. "It has hurt you too much."

"My true aunt, the true Lady of the Lake, did not see my humanity as a bad thing. She could conceive of morals, she knew when you were wrong! Maybe her morals weren't mortal ones, but she was better than you. She approved of my thoughts too and chose to support them! You are wrong about her. She considered me very fortunate to be raised by humans. She trusted Ambrosia."

"As did we all. It is a common mistake, isn't it? Expecting your child to be an extension of yourself. I was setting myself up for disappointment. I should have raised you myself."

"Enough of this!"

"My judge," she argued her voice like ice. Such coldness, such softness to her. She was unmistakably Queen Mab.

"you are not without fault."

"We are not here to discuss that."

"Oh but I believe we must, for mere moments ago you have killed at least half of me.

You act and feel like us, as gods, though you deny it. You portray yourself as a higher entity, much more than a king. You decide everyone's fate as if you are entitled to. In a way you are, because I made you to that very purpose. You mark yourself as different from them in the very position you took in relation to them. You aren't very human, you chose not to be.

My righteous son and heir and slayer."

"Do you hate me?"

It was the voice of the righteous, meddling wizard in charge deciding the fate of the land. He was going to make a lecture of this, of her very existence. To be her executioner, what now, it was what he was good at, his nature to fall on and grasp back onto. She could hardly blame him.

"I never have."

"You talk of the Lady or Mab or ...you?"

She shrugged, making him none the wiser. "Part of me wants to, wants to make your pretty eyes bleed tears. I want revenge, not even for myself, really."

"Your belligerent Mordred?"

"Among others, many of whom you never knew. And for you, my son, to avenge who you became. I torture myself over it, as much as I am proud of you as well." He scoffed. "The plan was to create you together, both sisters, your bones drenched in magic, blood from stone and water, crystals for flesh and air to give you life.

Now it is you who has joined the dying sisters. There is an irony in there, if you want to see it, but you wouldn't." She sighed, a small sigh, aware of her hopeless position. This creature carved by stone and water. Her shape wavered.

"Don't go."

"Why?" It was not so much an inquiry as amazement.

"Lady?"

"Why can't you leave things be?"

"We have to do something! Undo this!"

"Why?"

"You know why."

"Because I am not "up to scratch" according to you and worse, I have no intention to live up to your painstaking ideals.

You love life, Merlin. I have seen you play with the ducklings in my lake. You cherish life.

My right to exist does not fall under your jurisdiction, 'Master' Merlin. Leave me to exist. I wish to exist. "

"Lady, you are the only family I have."

"That is rather, as humans say, on you. Your own doing and undoing. By your hand." The more redundant accusations she should pile on the better. It almost made her feel good.

"Do not betray me." he almost whimpered, then took firm hold of his voice. "Guarantee me that you will not to bring ruin on this land and its inhabitants, promise me."

"I will give you an ally and friend." He did not believe her.

She appeared completely radiant in her white light, soft flowing ringlets of hair trailed down her gown, this was who the Lady had been. The one who saved him, and all he stood for by, being his guide in life. Right before him. The one who had let his mother die. She did not look much like Mab. She was her all the same. He observed her There was something stone-like to her. A hollow stone, if she were to be laid bare, hollow as a fairy. Her life would show no riches. Unlike the treasures hidden in the waters of the Lady's spirit.

Purple and white swirled in her hand, as a wave it crystalized, she held out the rock to him. A token of good will, as Mab loved to give. "This holds the power of a dying goddess, take it, so you may know me.

You do know how to draw power from a rock, don't you?"

"I don't trust you."

"Yes, we've established that." That is what made it such fun to offer him a gift, a gift for good or ill, he will never know which. The stone disappeared from her hand.

"Stay there." He planted his staff in the gritty ground of sand and rocks.

"For both our sakes, don't be like that..."

But, he would act true to himself. He drew a uneven circle with his staff around where she stood. The centre of the circle was the rock she had sat on.

"I have some magic left."

"You will use magic to defeat me?"

"I will use it to extract Mab from you."

"That is sweet of you." It wasn't.

"But I am content as I am." She spoke gently, still he cast aside her words in his pride. She stood, silenced. It almost made him believe she had accepted her fate. "And once you've drawn out the evil spirit?"

"I will defeat Queen Mab as I promised."

"Kill her any way you can?"

"That was my vow. To use magic only..."

"I know, I know."

"I will keep it. Her sister has been nothing but kind to me. My vow does not extend to her. Once I separate you I will not break my promise, you will go unharmed, Lady. "

"Unless your plan doesn't work. Then you will kill us both.

You don't see me bespelling you to erase all I don't like about you. You had more sense in Camelot. You used as little magic as possible, knowing that was my force. Then you killed all magic and now... you tell me... you conveniently have some magic left up your sleeve to tear me apart? Just because I will not wait lethargically for my end. Ambrosia raised quite the hypocrite."

"At least she did not raise a murdered, as you would have me be.

She shrugged slightly. "Clearly she has.

You believe the new religion will be that much better?"

"I... don't believe anything. At least it proclaims peace.

Once you are gone there will be a chance..."

"Get on with it then, crush your meaning to life- fighting me- and who knows some golden age may arrive, the world will be suddenly better, one of your noble idealist-wards may find the Holy Grail."

"Do not mock my beliefs."

"I am not mocking you. But just where is this god of yours? I have not once seen him appear and help his followers, as I have. I did all I could to treat my worshippers as they deserved. And why isn't he here beside you to see me driven from this world or smite me himself? I have known negligent gods, but most attend their own celebrations at least. His absence makes me think maybe it is not the new religion that wants me dead...anymore... maybe, by now, it is just... you."

The thought almost made her laugh. The wizard focused on his task and let her stand in acid silence.

"Hate me all you like. Perhaps pure hate will destroy me after all. I can live with your hate."

"Does the Lady agree with on that, Mab?" She cast him an almost tender look. "I wouldn't know. I only know what I believe now. So judge me all you like." He stood tall and brave for a moment, silent and still. Considering his course to take.

"Do you want my advice or not?"

"I don't think so."

"The Great Dragon is dead. I felt him go." She watched him collect stones and twigs along the waterside. She watched him take no notice of her as he sorted them into piles.

Of course he had taught himself how to take energy out of nature, like her. "Hypocrite" she whispered affectionately. He was not utterly incorruptible then. She thought of the talents he had once possessed. She would rather spend these moments, in which he set up his great enchantment, talking. She leaned towards him.

"You showed promise for disguises and illusion. Just as I had hoped, holding the moon in your hand, cheating at cards with Frik, drawing confusion mists to attempt and converse privately with my 'better half'. It is my belief that you are fond of our games, secretly. It is a shame you never put those talents to better use, except that time with Uther of course." She rolled her eyes dismissively to the side.

"Such tricks are unethical."

"They are part of your heritance. You should not cast your nature aside."

She was of two opposite natures too now. She still appeared less conflicted than him. "Which is your true face, Mab?"

"You can peer through my glamours, Merlin, you tell me." She could feel her insides still shifting and whirling trying to marry the two sisters. An ongoing process. She looked on him with those pale purple eyes shrouded by darkness. Maybe the talent had left him. "What do I look like?"

He remained silent, testing his piles of wood and stone, finding that indeed there was little magic left in the world.

"I can appear to be anyone I choose to be, I still hold that ability, so could you if you took the effort. I can be every ghost from your past. Vortigern, Ambrosia, I can be the image of those you love, for as long as I continue to be, and make you hate their guises, in time, all in good time." He glared most unpleasantly at her, his Nimue-glare she used to call it, one he kept preserved for talks and threats to his girlfriend. "No, I would not taunt you with your sanctimonious little Nimue. That would be vulgar, I have standards.

Are you ready to answer who I am? According to you."

He raised his arms, drew power up from the circle. She stepped back against her rock, to have something to hold onto in case this went terribly wrong.

"This is the moment I drive you out."

"The magic is not flowing right. You should have placed the stones, or what would have worked better crystals, in the water first to ease the magic's path. This is advanced magic. You need a pre-set current. You can't afford to be lax in this magic. I know your crude approach to magic has often worked for you in the past..."

"Can you be quiet?" he strained, projecting his force upwards and enclosing the circle around her. Narrowing it, tighter, tighter.

"Wrong hand there, try the other and tighten your grip on the staff's gem."

"I only have two hands."

"Yes, and that would be enough, if you'd prepared better. You really should be able to do most of this by thought." She sounded, she was, bored. She had never enjoyed teaching. "That is why hand wizards run out of options. Not enough hands. Finally you are learning something, far too late, as usual." The shield broke around her. He stood before her, chest heaving from effort.

"This wouldn't have happened if you'd finished your training."

"Oh, I will rub it in as much as I like. I only stayed to be appear benevolent. I could have escaped your experiment here in one thought or step." She inched to the side of his circle-drawing. "Do you see this symbol? It is missing a stripe. It is complete nonsense as you have written it. Let me show you." She reworked some of his doodlings, really, they weren't worthy of a more distinguished word.

"Then I will try again."

"It still won't work. It is too late. The psyche of both sisters has settled in me. I am like this forever now. Or until your humankind changes its opinion of me and the old ways once more. Who knows what your friends of the new ways may still make of me, us."

"You are the devil."

"That settles that then, my anti-Christ. Besides," She placed a hand up his warm chest. " today you have squandered your last magical tour de force . I tried to congratulate you on your magic over the years, even as we fought before, hoping to spark your interest, however clumsy your attempts. Don't look that resentful. I enjoyed when you subdued the Great Dragon, it was prettily done and even as your lover burnt you took care not to hurt him. I like that about you." She tried to catch his eye. His leniency.

"Suffer me to live, dear boy." He shook, not just his head.

"What do I call you now?"

"I do not know yet. A name may come to me at some point, it is hardly a priority. Surviving is, as usual." Maybe he could still see her as his mother, maybe he never had. She was not certain her claim on him still counted.

She looked upon him. The both of her might be forgotten about within the year. And him?

If he had not used his final scrap of magic on her he might have accidentally locked himself up in a tree or something after that fashion.

"I shall not show myself before you again. I invested all my greatest plans and power in you, I wish... I had done a better job when I created you.

If only you accept this reality, with me, where I continue to exist, to remain. " She accentuated the final word.

"Let me live.

I won't cross your path again, Merlin." She took off his helmet and kissed his hair.

"Give up on this fight. It is over.

Don't follow me." He followed her gaze to the lake, to the dark crystals and corpses he imagined she would live with there. She dove into her lake with the same elegance he had always attributed to this sister of water and light.

"You can rest." echoed over the water. Chances are he would not.

/

"_I don't know what I'll do, or what I'll become. Only what I am."_

"_A wise answer." _

"_I had a wise teacher."_

(Merlin 1998)

The wizard retreated into the dark green woods, to be swallowed by the trees and soppy moors, as his Nimue almost was. For all the people of Camelot knew he had gone from the land forever. He was credited to be at peace or perhaps in an eternal agony of sleep.

He prayed his plans for a solitary madman's existence would not be swiftly annihilated. Not by mankind or any other. If they were in need, he prayed he would never know, for he never could resist the siren call of being needed.

And it had cost him Nimue, every single time.

He hoped the people would forget about him, so he could stay 'dead'. Remembrance, a dangerous weed. Merlin's fear, Mab's final hope.

How he prayed.

"Why did you call me, Merlin?"

She took in the cold, dreadfully mortal air and shook.

She wrapped herself up tighter in her otherworldly cloak.

"I didn't, Mab." He fixed his eyes upon her, looking for all the world as if he would growl.

"You won the war, what more can you want?" she inquired kindly. His face changed to bitter incredulity.

Her gone from existence, of course.

"Nevertheless you did call me, my son. You can't hide your wishes from me under that silly helmet." She felt his brewing thoughts, practically steaming.

With fleeting fingers she picked the horrid item right off his head and put it on the table before him.

"Are you feeling nostalgic? Is that why you are wearing this still? It won't keep the past with you. Your strength of yore. You can grasp all you like. What matters most never seems to stick. No matter what meaningful memorabilia you manage to keep."

His expression heaped more disbelief upon her. If he kept reducing her to Mab, well then,... she possessively caressed the top of his helmet...

"Are you a goddess of thieves now?"

"Oh Merlin, Merlin, Merlin," Her voice went from breathy to raw and her face shifted to almost amused. He wondered if she was aware of her own emotions. She was playing with him, that much was certain. This was going to be one of those occasions where she kept using his name to gain some ungodly power over him. It wouldn't work, he promised himself, it never did. It only served to vex him further.

"Mab."

"Though we parted on bad terms, there is no reason to call me names."

"You claim you are not 'Mab'."

"Exactly."

Her smoky eyes twinkled, suddenly noticing something of interest in the gloom of his hut. A makeshift bed, no blankets on it, the lonely stillness of this image.

Her finger drew a spiral on his helmet, the symbol is the eternal, of growth. An idle hand gesture which he interpreted as pure cruelty.

"Your lover is gone... has she run away?"

"I don't see Frik, did he?" he quipped back. "Mistress of Snipes, are we now?"

Oh, to taunt each other by heartlessly pretending not to know of each other's tragedies. How childish. Merlin despised this.

She shrugged again. "I don't know." she muttered.

Even worse, he thought, she was feigning amnesia.

"Indifference to what 'pre'-you did doesn't clear you from their crimes."

"No, yes, I figured that would be your stance."

"You should leave."

"Pray to me first."

"No."

"You were off to a good start, or to a start at least, it would be rude not to continue."

"Rude, you barged in here..." he charged, she slunk towards him.

"If you never finish your prayer to me, I may never leave. I will could haunt you until..."

"You shouldn't have answered in person then." he interrupted her quite possibly empty threat and she harrumphed in a moderately disgruntled manner. "Now you'll never know what I might have said."

"I've lost so much already by your account, Merlin. Give me this."

"Or else... do I need to banish you? As some kind of demon." It was appropriate. He imagined it would not so different from his feat at Camelot. Ignore her. That is the key. Until she is smoke, a puddle, perhaps. Expel her, without spells, of all the absurd moments in his life. This was far from the weirdest.

"I was under the impression we, you, already tried that, twice.

Maybe I am a demon. To your new religion. I hear it is very generous with the term."

"It is not my religion."

She shrugged noncommittedly. "May as well be. You dance so prettily to its tune."

"Anything too strange, too old, too distant in space or time, becomes a demon, in any belief."

"We all have demons." He was hers, he needed not to ask. "Who knows what I may still become under the right influence?" She couldn't feel the New Ways pressing down upon her anymore, but he did not need to know that. Her senses had been dulled. By dying. This did not mean the foreign force wasn't still there. " I may become so much worse than you already know me to be, stronger. " She turned her fierce fear to a joyful tone. A brave mask. A bluff. "Will you risk that?"

"Have you decided on what you are?" he demanded.

"What does it matter? Human, god, ghost. We are all stories. Just stories."

She tapped the helmet with a purple nail, it made a sound like a bell. A dull echo, a church bell, not fairy bells. It carried no finality, only resonance. It was the most ominous sound that had ever reached his ears.

"Do you really want those narrow-minded murderous invaders to win?" A strange mood had taken hold of her.

She was forever entwined with his love and hate. Could she depend upon this?

She brushed something like sooth, like sparkles, off her jewel encrusted shoulder. Her cloak shivered against her touch, as a cat shirked from the cold water.

He had lost in her what he loved most and least. What was left for him to feel anything about? What if his convictions faded? Without his love and hate what was to be left of her? Enough, it would seem, seeing as she was still corporally here. So maybe she did not need him all that much. Not as much, as she had thought.

Guiding her cloak to the side, she sat down. She felt the air in turn shiver against her uncovered arm. She tilted her head back and listened, patiently, deceptively benign, for Merlin to commit to his prayer.

She was faced with the pointlessly rebellious side of to him.

"I'll defeat you, Mab. Let this be my prayer to you then, conniving crone. An ode to you, the thorn in my foot, the ache in my bones, the acidic hole in my heart, the pain searing through my teeth, you are the destroyer of my existence."

There was certainly enough conviction left here.

"Hereby I declare you the living ghost who wrenches me back from ever living. Your past dark times I never even knew, grabbed hold of me and refuse to let me go. I have lived with your long-outworn, faded world pulling every dream of what I could be from my hands. Never was I truly able to live as I saw fit. I was born half dead."

"You were born half a god!"

"I was not! I can't go to the mountains, I can't go to sea, I can't go anywhere without seeing you, hearing you as I climb and run in places no other living thing could possibly reach. I seclude myself. I am happy to seclude myself, it is what I prefer.

But the more I keep away from people to keep you away from them, the more I stand alone and the more I am alone the more eager you are to appear and converse with me as some devil snake in the desert. Even if I do go to a feast, to a joust, to a burial, to Camelot, to Tintagel, anywhere with people, there you are, stirring the cauldron of human events with this gleeful look in your eyes, as if to say 'hi son, what joy you could make it here come taste of their weaknesses with me!'

There is no escaping you. My life spirals around you as a fixed point. You are its rotten core I can't get rid of."

"So you thought you'd cut out the core?

You are one sour apple, Merlin."

"Don't start about apples."

"Come now, I am entitled to, sin is female, even your Nimue ate from that apple. Condemning all women as one. It is hereditary isn't it? I reckon that is the general gist. I admit I don't quite understand the nonsense tale. It is just another example of the New Ways judging harshly and blindly as usual, as you do.

You do realize, by such 'apple' logic, your fair pure-hearted maid's nature is closer to mine than yours. How do you feel about that? Our energies would not be regarded as even remotely similar in my religion."

"Nor in mine, Mab. You never could tell sin from virtue, or right from wrong, and never will."

"Of course, you have only seen our entire world change.

You have seen war lords rise and fall, you have seen cultures fight and merge, good men go mad and snivelers turn heroes. Having seen your aunt and mother change before your eyes by man's influence, and even having caused the last steps to their downfall, naturally you do not believe in change.

I may surprise you, Merlin."

"I don't think so."

"I want to remind you, you are not particularly talented at evaluating yourself either. So afraid of change. You run away from any kind of 'verdict', Morgan told me..."

His leftover food caught her gaze, she directed his plate slowly towards her. Distracted easily as a child.

"Is this your offering to me?"

"You don't need food to sustain you."

"It is a meagre meal. Pour some of that wine over it, that may make it wore worthy."

He stood, high, intimidating, he took the jug, which in fact contained mead, poured it over his food.

"I hope you choke on it."

"Better." she declared.

"Are you playing magpie?"

"Your personal magpie," As if addressing a subordinate she waved a glittering hand. "you can continue telling me of your woes and wishes now." What was she so joyfully smug about?

She surely knew by now she would never succeed at making him join her ways. Perhaps, having next to nothing left to lose, she saw no point in not paying in a visit nor in not enjoying the hell out of it.

"Never. It is you who are my problem."

"I know. And you are mine." She whispered sweetly, suddenly he sickened.

"What is it? What is wrong?"

"What more do you intend to steal from me? My courage by my helmet, my soul by thoughts spoken in the confines of my silent contemplation, my strength by food."

"You are overthinking this. My motivations are not near as symbolic as that. I come here to gift you a reward for your trust in me."

"My...?"

"Your trust, since you are the first follower of My New Ways."

She raised a bite to her lips. "You see, I am not only here to be a thieving magpie, but also a giving one. I wish to grant you an as-of-yet-undefined something in return for your devoted prayer. I am not going to grant you weaponry, as myself, my sister did," she gave him a thoughtful look. "such an item would undoubtedly be used against me. What then?"

"I don't want anything from you." he said articulating most emphatically.

"It would be very helpful to me if you could continue to pray to me for years to come." Now what is it that he really wanted? A brilliant idea came to her. "And I could..." - empty hand gesture- "take away your magic."

"You can do that?"

"Yes," she bared her teeth, all too vampirically. "I do. If there is any left. I can take away your innate abilities quite easily and keep your powers to myself or distribute them elsewhere. There is not much to it."

"Why did you not try that before? To be rid of me?"

"Hope." she whispered. "I kept hoping." She forced herself back on track.

"I can... let you live a happy, soppy, drab human life." Her eyes fixed on the mess in his plate. "You can do this just as well without my help..." she realized. He had done so even when his powers had been at their presumable height. Her eyes regretfully raked over the magically exhausted state he was in.

"Either way our game of mutual defiance and global destruction is at an end, whether we want it to be or not. There is only us left. No magic. Only our battling wills. Teeth to teeth. A reluctant equilibrium Would you prefer neither of us to be left? Everything was a waste of your talents, and mine..."

"Why are you here, Mab?"

"It would be a shame not to try and convert you when you call, I treasure those rare occasions. Let us come to an agreement. We must find some way to turn you back to me.

You haven't finished your prayer yet, dear, you should, it is good for your soul, it will lighten your heart, all that drivel, a clear mind to make clear decisions."

He looked more like his mind was caught in a tempest. His lines of thought swirling in fire, broken and bold.

"Get out!"

"Oh I will, when I am dead." Apparently unfazed, she ate his meal in unsettlingly small elegant bites. Of all the things Mab could have inherited from her sister, Merlin regretted she had made her patience her own.

"I wish I had never given Excalibur back to you."

"You are more than a fairy-tale sword." she chided, the fairy who owned said real-as-dirt sword. "Don't stoop to Uther's level."

"For Christ's sake!" he exclaimed at this grave accusation.

"Is the blasphemy strictly necessary? You are giving me a headache."

His hand dived into her plate to salvage a good-looking piece of greenery, which he promptly ate himself.

"It is in the Christian spirit, isn't it?" she remarked smoothly. "to share a meal with your worst enemy. Look how well I am adjusting."

"Indeed." He hesitated, with severity. "Do you want me to smuggle you into Christianity? Is that what this is about?"

As if she would dabble in such dark places. He could snuggle into his comfort blanket of Christianity all he liked. It would not catch her. She would scream herself shrill opposing the new religion. "I want nothing to do with that exotic hokum ideology." she progressed deceptively calm, as the Lady would have. Merlin killed that thought in the cradle of his mind.

She shrugged, offended.

"I wanted to see my son."

He almost grabbed for her black-clad neck.

"It is never that simple with you. You have come to sneer, have you? See how well I look to the backdrop of your impending new schemes. You have schemes crawling from here to the blasted moon."

"Not anymore. I will let you go, Merlin, if..."

"I finish that prayer..."

"Tell me what I need to hear." She waited for his heartbeat, one, two,... "Will you be my champion?"

"Never."

"Am I not your Lady of the Lake?" She extended her hand, sparkling as pure water, gently over the table. "Can you admit your quest for freedom only insignificantly differs from mine?"

Her softer side shone from her, the side that knew him, understood him. He feared this most of all. Mab with her brisk uncompromising manner would never have stood a chance to have him consider, if but for a moment, to hear her out.

"No, Mab, no." he warded off her words, but could not ward off her touch when she leaned forward to place her hand, even softer than her words, on his cheek. The comfort his aunt would give him. The comfort he needed from her.

"I don't..."

"Give me my son back."

"You never had me to begin with. My entire creation was a disaster.

Ambrosia was my mother."

"Then why don't you pray to her? Why make me think I even held a chance of getting near you? Merlin, I have always loved you." she said offhandedly, as if it was the most evident fact in the world. She had risen from her seat, he had not noticed, she leaned against the table, she looked like Mab, her sentiment felt very much like her, though her sentences sounded most un-Mab-like and when she spoke her voice carried the Lady's kind sincerity. The expression in her eyes, it took all of Merlin's strength not to feel disarmed. He forced himself to reflect on Nimue, her needlessly trying fate, to confirm that his love for her had not faded away.

"Our love for you was the only thing I always had in common with my sister and that never changed, no matter how much we did change." She made her way to the side of the table.

She could hear his need for constancy battling her. He liked things to be one way or the other. He liked them to be either eternal or not at all. Eternal, distant and pure. For concepts not to come close. Because then his ideals would not survive. Distance was the only way for him to love, to find peace in this world, to handle a friendship, a kingdom, to have everything last. It is what he proclaimed to his people as well, courtly love, stoic wisdom. The moment life came too close to him and people turned real, conflicts turned into concrete situations, nothing would hold. He would be miserable.

"I remember what it was like to hold you in the palm of my hand."

"Your wished to use my power."

"I used your power to help you. To help you find yourself, the life you desired and help you protect the people you wished to spend it with. That was the full extent of my modest ambition."

"You are speaking of the Lady. The other 'you' would have crushed me."

"You must stop splitting me up in two. When I was your mother... I don't know what I used to think, Merlin. I don't know what to do with my love for you. You tell me." She threw the words so simply into the air between them. Was this creature careless with her heart? Was he truly all that her heart contained? It was frightful to consider.

"Pray and tell me."

He wished he could address his cherished aunt and only her. She was closer than ever. She was split, broken, corrupted, tainted. She looked more like Mab now than she had before, when they 'first' met at the Lake.

She wore white crystals on her forehead. His jaw was clenched tightly. She interpreted his look as concern. "I am not unhappy like this. It is better to fade together, after a fashion." Her lips pursed together in genuine worry. In her soft eyes he could see dark birds in a clear night sky.

"You can give me back Nimue. It was your, Mab's" he corrected himself, before continuing with great weight. "magic that entrapped her." My love. "Tell me where she is. You know where. Show me you have changed."

"Not that much."

She regretted she did not know where she had disposed of the mortal. Honestly. She would not admit her own failing. She would skate around the holes in her memory as well as she could. "Show me you have changed first. Don't kill me." She sounded panicked. She suppressed her fear as well as she could. "Am I to be a sacrifice to your modern god?"

"I keep telling you. He is not my god. What are you?"

"Whatever you believe in, my sweet wizard. That is what I am.

You belong to me," she whispered, altogether too nice, her eyes caught a glimpse of hopeful lavender as she looked up at him. Ravens in a lavender sky. He was reminded of the darkly threatening side to his Lady of the Lake which he had only ever seen when she had talked of Mab to discredit her and tip him off on how to murder her.

He had never felt more torn between worlds.

"You. Don't. own. Me."

"Mankind owned me, Merlin. I did not complain, only when they neglected me. This is my plea. Lift me in your heart. I can survive on you. Don't let them throw me away. They may not miss me but you will and I am scared."

"Scared?"

She deflected, "I am the only mother you have."

"I did not ask to be made." He swiftly caught the bait, he could be tragically predictable.

"No one does. Please, Merlin, when I am gone, pray for me."

"I'll pray for your soul, if you have one. I'll pray it to hell. I wasn't calling you! I was damning you. Cursing your existence."

"Same thing." she suggested, desperately. "You believe most of in me out of everyone. I exist in your enduring hatred. You help give me life, you are my faithful devotee." Her voice grew fainter the more she failed to hold his interest. She whispered, constricted, pressing herself into someone she was not. "I should be flattered..."

This conversation was going in circles. It angered him. Back on hell, back on demons, three times. How is that bad? Queen Mab would wonder. Every new circle she could have another shot at turning events to her advantage.

He watched. She only looked pitiful.

He thought he heard, though he could not see, tears as he ripped himself away from her, his chair, his table.

"Don't press your luck. If you were truly dead, I would be safe. The dead can't reach me in the same way you can. As soon as you are remembered you reappear, it is a damnable practice. A death cult that can never be a death cult. I would pray for you to stay dead. I would rather be rid of you."

He tried, cried, exasperated. His words cut himself. She was on her knees again. She softly smiled. "How often a day do you curse me?"

"You promised to leave me. As long as you live you see me as yours. You will not let me be, you try to ensnare me again and again and you will continue, you can't help it, as long as you live!"

"I had given up on you and my plans for you, years, decades ago. It is you who keeps holding onto me. Trying to thwart me without cease in my life and near-death.

I can't be whoever you want me to be, my dear. I would be anything you want, if I could, but you are as twisted and torn about me as I am."

"You deserve a bloody end as you have brought to others. Why can't you leave?" He could not look at her, he could not sound convinced. For once, the great wizard, did not know.

She stood, she walked to the door to watch outside, to where he looked. Some fairies fluttered to meet her. "you lied to me... you said I'd killed them all."

She deftly answered: "A handful of pixies have survived your... antics. I only found out..."

"You could be lying."

Queen Mab could not lie, it was not in her fae nature. Merlin had depended upon this in their previous encounter, forgetting that the other one, the one he had like, the one he had trusted, she could have possessed the talent of outright lying, though she had still preferred presenting him with riddles in the past.

"I would have kept it a secret, you don't deserve to be made 'felt better' about what you've done. But pixies have a mind of their own. They like me too much to stay clear, even from you."

"Mab..."

"They get lonely.

As... all of us?"

"Can't you be an illusion? Tell me you don't exist? Tell me you are a ghost?" He was as desperate as her, it surprised her.

She looked frightfully delighted at his side.

"I pray..." she began. "for a beautiful storm, to dance in the rain, jump to the lightning, taste the shadows, ... Because I still live, I eat your food, drink your drink, imagine I feel what it is like to want more than power and endurance, I want... to walk like you, wear my own cloak, exist without anything more, which is in itself more than I have ever known.

If I can be two wildly different people, why not three? To embrace my son's quirks as caringly as they were my own."

"You are drunk on prolonged survival."

"Why not? I am here, choosing to be with you." She linked her arm with his, turned him back to the inside of his hut. His eyes acclimatized slowly from the glinting sun to his shadowy home. "In this hut, to exchange our thoughts. There is little else to do here. It is deplorable how small your home is. You call that a bed? The floor looks preferable to that contraption. Twig and moss would serve better. Cooking pot, herbs, your tired bones will force you to utilize magic before I can. " There was no mistaking that whisper. Not even from another whisper. Certainly not for a lover's whisper.

It was Queen Mab's voice. This new tone she had taken, he could not place it.

He knew one thing. For him there would be no more fighting her, no rising up for her, no dying by opposing her either.

"At least you eat well." Berries were disappearing before his eyes. The pixies were gobbling down his berries.

"Don't look at me, I may be their queen but when pixies are hungry.."

"They are following your lead."

"Well, maybe, besides, contrary to your beloved human rulers, I care for my subjects."

"What is happening?"

Her hair fell forward, to hide herself.

"Do you miss her?" Silence. "Nimue." Mab sampled the name. This was the first time he had heard her use it in earnest.

"Of course I miss her."

"Merlin, are you lonely?"

"Are you?"

"Yes," she hissed, released her breath slowly. Breathing was a struggle in sadness. "I am looking to sleep here. I wish for a home. It does not have to be for long. My cave, my lake," she reconsidered. "the cave, the lake, they taste bitter and cold. I am someone else, Merlin." He understands now the more 'Merlin's she uses, the more worried she is. "I need a home and this.. is a dump."

"Thank you."

"It will do." Her dark lips twitched to a smile. " I am no Nimue, or Frik, but I can keep you company, if you will have me. If that answers your prayer." Not exactly, 'come live with me' would be a very free interpretation of the wish to be rid of her, and if he was being honest a wish to be rid of himself also. "Will you be my..."

"Champion? No."

"Protector? Please?"

"Is that your prayer?" she nodded, once, solemnly.

"Then I will be."

"Help me." She nudged his hand to her cloak and he removed it, lay it on the floor to her instructions so it could service as a bed.

"Lady, what is this?"

Her bared skin showed deep swirls of purple and blue. Cracked open by nature she revealed glittering gemstones and rocks. She was stone weathered by water. Riches shone within her. He had doubted this.

"I told you, I am ... -a bit - torn. I believe them to be scars. They hurt sometimes. It is are beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yes, you are beautiful."

The goddess lay down in her bed and fell asleep.


End file.
